Yachting : Not all fun for the McDonalds

By Stuart Alexander

9:27PM GMT 05 Jan 2002

AUCKLAND laid on midnight revelry, fireworks and then a major downpour to accompany the reuniting of Neal McDonald, the Volvo Ocean Race leg-three winner, and his wife, Lisa, who brought the all-woman crew of Amer Sports Too through the finish line from Sydney yesterday.

Once again they trailed the other seven boats badly after breaking a forestay and then being forced into an extra 19 hours' stopover in Hobart after splitting the rudder following a collision with what they think was a shark or another big fish.

"We are very happy to be here," said Lisa, "but I'm sad I wasn't around to join in Neal's winning arrival."

In the background, a major row is brewing over a protest lodged by Jez Fanstone, the British skipper of News Corp. He has asked for redress because Kevin Shoebridge was awarded six points for being third in a last-gasp lunge for the finish here. Shoebridge's Tyco was declared ineligible for a result in the Sydney-Hobart race - part of the third leg of the Volvo - because it failed to meet a mandatory safety reporting procedure.

Tyco protested the decision, insisting they had made every effort to call on time and had finally done so, albeit late.

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A jury headed by the same man who chairs the Volvo international equivalent, Bryan Willis, upheld the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's decision, but also added a rider that it did not affect the Volvo Race. He now sits in Auckland tomorrow to hear what will amount to an attempt to throw Tyco, already well down the points table after retiring from the second leg with a broken rudder, out of the third as well.

News Corp has been joined in the protest by Gunnar Krantz's SEB, put out of business on leg three with a broken rudder. This move is designed to determine whether the jury is going to be tough on enforcing rules after allowing overall leader John Kostecki - who intends to replace Illbruck's mast ahead of the next leg - to pay a fine instead of being disqualified after the first leg for making illegal modifications to his boat.

Ross Field, on News Corp, thinks he will not be able to rejoin his crew until the fifth leg to Miami at the earliest after finally surrendering to the four cracked ribs he suffered towards the end of the second leg from Cape Town to Sydney. It is even possible he has sailed his last major ocean race.

The next leg of the race, starting on Jan 27, takes the boats back into the Southern Ocean, round Cape Horn and up the east coast of South America to Rio de Janeiro.